The One That Got Away

Some elements of my play last night were quite sad. For example taking delight and being pleased with myself for destroying a Catalyst undocking from a station with my Drake. I had been feeling that low after losing three ships (Jaguar, Rupture & Hurricane) in a row that any kill of any description felt good! Adding to the hardly exciting or meaningful kills were an Executioner in a belt & an Iteron undocking from another station. I did manage to snag all three Pods though which I was rather impressed with as I was in a battlecruiser. So all in all my evening was not a waste but not terribly exciting either.

That is until I noticed a Hurricane arrive in top belt in Adirain, he killed the single rat in the belt and sat there. Could this be a second trap of the day for Kirith to spring? I kind of sensed that it would be, but I figured i'd have a go. Warping in with my Drake I landed 13km from him. Lock, missiles away, point, close the distance, double webs. Unsure whether he's armour or shield tanked I'm using navy scourge heavy missiles, his shields are gone in a couple of volleys and then I hit armour, looks like he's triple trimark armour tank soo this'll take a while. Cue, local spike by about 8. I align out and overheat MWD, his fleet of cruisers & battlecruisers lands and I'm burning away. I notice an Ares with them too and think I'm not getting out. 30km from the Hurricane bait ship and my warp drive engages. Suprised much? Yes me too! Sadly lost five drones but I saved the ship

I dock up and log as it's time to pick up the girlfriend. So, what have I been thinking since? Could I have taken any of his fleet down and survived? I firmly beleive that had the Ares not been there then I could, unfortunately he was so I can sleep soundly knowing that I did all I could, saved my ship and got away from the trap.

So far my opinion of the PODLA setup Drake....pretty damn good thank you very much.

Explosions, more explosions!

This entries title will probably bring a cringe from any WoW players out there as the cry from Grand Mekengineer Thermaplugg at the end of Gnomeregan! But anyway I digress.

It has been a busy few days in terms of explosions, I've both killed some and lost some and had some really exciting and fun fights amongst them, I think I have lost most of the fun ones though to be honest! I have now come to see the value in Thermodynamics and the ability to overheat modules, which has led me to bring forward my training of Thermodynamic a couple of weeks due to losing a few fights that I could have won if I could overheat. All I am missing to commence training is Engineering V which is now underway and Thermodynamics will be at III by next weekend well on its way to IV. I've also been doing some work on training plans for other ships after the Rifter, but thats for its own post I think at some point in the hopefully near future.

Lets summarise recent events then:

Iteron
The friend of mine who convinced me to start playing EvE has a couple of accounts and one of them took delivery of their covops frigate the other day. He brought it over to Verge Vendor and found me an Iteron in a belt while I was out of system, meaning I could warp straight in to the right belt. Not a great deal to say other than that it had three shield boosters fitted, not entirely sure why he thought that was a good idea. He declined the ransom and set his Pod to self destruct so I saved him the trouble.

Rifter & Griffin
Reports came over voice comms that a frigate gang was in our home system and had warped to a belt, many of us scrambled to the belt and I made for the system and belt as quick as possible. I managed to land when only this Griffin & Rifter remained, we Podded the Rifter pilot but I beleive all the others got away with the Pods.

Hyperion & Megathron
While we were engaged with the frigate gang (above) these two Battleships started firing on a corp mate as he undocked, once the frigate gang was despatched we headed back to engage in a mix of ships, we all had GCC though so I did not have great hopes for my Rifters survival. The Hyperion was about to go down as I landed so I headed to get point on the Megathron. I caught him easily and soon enough the rest of the gang had him pointed too, at this time though the Sentries started firing on me so I bugged out just in time with 40% structure!

Armageddon
This chap one of our probers found in a Wormhole remote repping his Tower, our gang dropped on him like a ton of bricks and toasted him. We managed to extract a sizeable ransom from him to save his Pod & Tower, which I have just bought and fit 18 Rifters with!

Catalyst
Not alot to say about this one aside from his peculiar behaviour. I don't know whether he knew that I was following him but he landed at the top belt, warped off then the same at the second. I assumed that he warped as he was ratting and there were non present but when he died and I saw the mining fit I did scratch my head.

Three in a Row
This morning I logged in to test my sound as I have been having issues with it recently. I undocked with no sound but an Incursus on scan at a belt, feeling it would be rude not to say hi and went in and killed him & his Pod. I then saw another Incursus and an Iteron on scan at a beacon together, making myself known I roasted the Incursus first then the Iteron and of course their Pods. Epic fail on the Iteron loot drops :(. The latter incursus pilot did tell me that he didn't want to fight in local, but hey what's a pirate supposed to when people make it so easy?!

As I'd only logged on for a few minutes I did force myself to dock up and log even though the system kept filling up with ships I could go shoot. My willpower taking control for once.

So onto the losses, I'll be quick as this is getting to be a long post.

I lost a Gank fit Rifter after a tangle with a Dramiel, the Dramiel broke off once I had toasted his Warrior II's it was just after that I sighted another Rifter in a belt and went for it. It was reasonably close but I didn't break through all of his armour (about 10% to go). I can only say in my defence that I hadn't recoved from the Dramiel and was flying a Gank fit Rifter which I still don't like. I think I only have one more to lose now :)

I lost a crap fit Rifter in a very exciting fight vs an older player in a Tracking Disruptor fit Rifter. This was very close and Thermodynamics would have won the day for me if I had the skill!

I lost a Rifter I had just picked up from Bosena when I fought the Rifter from loss 1 above, this was so close coming down to who got their volley in first. It was that close that I thought I had won when I heard the explosion! Sadly I was looking at my Pod, he confirmed finishing on 27% structure. I had capped out several times, so better cap skills or Theromdynamics would have saved the day.

The two latter losses were exhilarating fights which I really enjoyed despite losing.

I feel like I have missed covering a few things, but I can alwats write them up in another post if or indeed when they come back to me.

Well that was fun

In the run up to Christmas I have been online less than I would have liked.

I'm back in the Tuskers home zone clone and went out with a small gang last night. Some lag spikes seemed to scare off some people so systems were pretty quiet. We picked off a Caracal running a mission along with his Pod, but other than that we didn't manage to get anything else juicy, though there was a possibility of an Ishtar in a mission, but he was pre-aligned and warped out denying us the kill. The fleet dispersed and as it did so I continued making bookmarks in neighbouring systems.

A little while later it came across voice comms that there were several small(ish) ships in a neighbouring system. I warped over to have a look and it was discovered that they were anchoring a POS. There wasn't enough time to stop them anchoring it unfortunately and a lot of the ships at the POS fled as we warped in.

I landed some 90km away from a target and burned as quick as I could towards him. On my way in an Iteron landed 20km in front of me, as I closed within point range as he struggled to align to warp out, he folded quickly but got his Pod out (the killmail has vanished though). Now closer to the Thorax engaged by Tarik, a Caracal landed. I got point on the Caracal and held him as a Rifter landed, the Rifter was called primary. The Rifter had me tackled but no-one had point on him. Switching fire to the Rifter while orbiting the Caracal to ensure I didn't lose point the Rifter went down along with his Pod, the pilot can't have been thinking of self preservation. With the Rifter down I put my Rockets onto the Thorax as my Auto's didn't have the range to hit it and my Auto's onto the Caracal. Once the Thorax was down the combined fire of Jag & Rifter quickly brought it it's knees. The pilot failed to pay the ransom on his Pod and was terminated. Burning back to the POS another Iteron landed and was destroyed, the Pilot's Pod saved by the POS bubble going up. Some of our corpmates had now entered the system and proceeded to find another of their haulers at a safe carrying some POS modules. He died quickly too, again failed to pay the ransom and was eliminated.

It all happened really quite quickly but was such good fun. I do hope that I see more fun and frollicks like this.